


Not Always Black and White

by BackslashEcho



Series: A Moment That Changes A Life When... [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Friendship, Gen, Headcanon, Monochrome - Freeform, One Shot Collection, Paranoia, Paranoid Personality Disorder, Touch Defensiveness, Two Shot, Vignette, sensory defensiveness, sensory processing disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 19:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3621624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BackslashEcho/pseuds/BackslashEcho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two-shot. The first is set approximately after <i>The Badge And The Burden</i>, in which Blake decides to be fairer to Weiss. The second is set after <i>Black and White</i>, in which the two of them elaborate on an inconsistency. Could be read as Monochrome, I guess?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Weiss…I owe you an apology.”

Weiss Schnee, currently lying on her back in bed studying, looked up, perplexed. Blake Belladonna’s slanted, amber-yellow eyes stared back steadily. When her roommate didn’t appear inclined to continue without prompting, Weiss cocked an eyebrow.

“For the things that I said the day we…met,” Blake clarified. After a moment’s silence, she sighed and asked, rhetorically, “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

Weiss merely looked on, eyebrow raised, face impassive, wondering where Blake was going with this, and why she had waited until they were alone if she was going to offer a token apology.

Blake tugged at her earlobe, then folded her arms defensively. “It was…unfair in the extreme for me to lay my grievances with your father’s company at your feet.” 

Weiss blinked.

“So…I’m sorry.”

The awkwardness mounted as the silence spiraled, but neither of them broke eye contact. Blake didn’t seem to be so much as blinking, her golden gaze unbroken. At last, Weiss took a breath, and Blake nearly flinched.

“I accept,” Weiss said, with a sniff. “I would request that you do not make assumptions about people you don’t know, until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.”

Blake flushed, bristling. “Your terms are fair,” she all but spat. “I suggest you abide by them as well, _Princess_.” She whirled on her heel and stalked away. 

Weiss sat up abruptly. “Blake.”

The other girl deigned to pause with her hand on the doorknob. She did not turn around.

Weiss brushed a finger over the scar across her left eye. “I’m seventeen,” she said bluntly. “Like you heard me tell my partner, I’m _not_ perfect. There’s a lot I don’t know, and probably a lot more that I take for granted.”

Blake was bristling, but she still said nothing, continuing to face the door.

“I’m not stupid, Blake,” Weiss continued, and the other girl stiffened. But still, Blake’s apology had turned out _not_ to be token, so Weiss could do no less and still claim to have honor. “The Schnee Dust Company is anything but transparent, even to someone close to it. Believe it or not, it’s something that I’ve wondered about in the past. Once, I even brought it up. My father’s views and mine…disagreed.” Her hand clenched in the blanket, but Blake still wasn’t looking at her.

“And unlike our teammates, I am not incapable of taking a hint,” Weiss finished doggedly, struggling to maintain her usual detachment and dignity. “So. I, too, apologize for my careless and unfair words.”

Blake turned the knob and opened the door at last. She stepped into the hallway, then half-turned back. She didn’t look fully around, but said over her shoulder, “Okay.”

Somehow, it was enough.


	2. Chapter 2

After the attempted robbery at the docks, Yang and Ruby had run off looking for Penny, who had undeniably saved their skins before suddenly disappearing. Sun had made an excuse and vanished, probably off to go steal something el—no. Even if it was probably objectively true, that wasn’t the way to look at it. He wasn’t a criminal like that Torchwick; she had no evidence, even from what Blake had told her of their days alone, of him stealing anything but a boat ride and food. Poverty was far from eliminated in Remnant, and not every child had the resources of the Schnee Dust Company around them growing up… 

Weiss’ fists clenched unconsciously. Like _that_ wasn’t a sick joke all its own.

Bow twitching, Blake glanced back at her, yellow eyes seeming to shine in the dim twilight. “Weiss…there’s still something that’s bothering me.”

Weiss blinked. “What?” 

It was less a prompt to continue and more a sign that Weiss hadn’t been paying attention at all, but Blake took it as the former. Her bow still quivering, she pressed. “There was something about…our argument…that didn’t make sense to me.”

“Yes…?” Weiss said cautiously, not wanting to start another fight when the last one had just ended.

“You told us that the Company had been targeted by violence your whole life,” Blake began in a low voice.

“Longer,” Weiss interrupted. “For once, this is a subject I’ve had a look at some of Father’s records. There have been disappearances going back almost three decades.”

“Weiss…” Blake said softly, pausing with her eyes shut. “The White Fang’s emblem changed to reflect their more radical stance…five years ago.” Weiss stopped walking, too. “That was when I started to ask questions. To get disenchanted. In the end, it was why I left.”

Weiss turned around and walked back to her teammate, stopping directly in front of her. Blake bristled, apparently at her sudden closeness, as golden-yellow eyes slid to meet ice-blue.

“Are you…certain of this?” Weiss said, quietly, coldly; unconsciously drawing on the freezing aloofness that she had cultivated around her father growing up.

Blake’s bow was folded back, and dimly Weiss realized her feline ears must be pressed flat to her head, but she seemed to be making herself reply just as coolly, refusing to back down. “I was with the White Fang for nearly as long as you have been with the Schnee Dust Company, Weiss. I’m certain.”

Weiss stepped back, not having heard that Blake had been born to her lot in life almost as much as Weiss herself had been born to her own. Idly, she noticed that some of the tension was leaving Blake’s form once more.

“You’re…as uncomfortable with closeness as I am,” Weiss whispered.

Blake’s bow, just starting to rise back to its usual position, flattened again immediately. This time, she did take a step back. “W-what?” she gasped. Weiss couldn’t quite deny that she rather enjoyed cracking the other girl’s composure. Still, there were limits to both decency and dignity, even given their…acerbic friendship. Besides, as she had just almost-inadvertently revealed, it wouldn’t be just Blake who was uncomfortable. 

Weiss herself took another step back, folding her arms and looking away, cursing her pale complexion as she felt heat in her cheeks. She might have been able to hide it in the Winter with her other teammates, but it was a warm night, and Faunus could see in the dark… 

Blake, for her part, took a step closer, and it was Weiss’ turn to flinch. Blake stopped. “I don’t think it’s the same,” the feline girl said, softly. “For me, it’s…a dislike of things I can’t see. An extension of my difficulties trusting people.”

‘Difficulties’ was putting it lightly, Weiss thought sourly, when she was happier to run away from her teammates in a crisis. Then the rest of what Blake had implied sank in. She already knew.

Weiss turned back, face questioning. Blake hadn’t moved, but she had to be sure. “You knew…?”

Blake tilted her head, bow quivering once more. “That you don’t like to be touched? Obviously. I don’t, do I?”

Weiss thought, but even when Ruby and Yang were being obnoxiously clingy— _Dolts_ , Weiss thought fondly—Blake had always hung back. She had put it down to the other girl’s reserve, but… “You don’t flinch, do you, when Yang grabs you?” she asked Blake, unable to hide the slightest tremor in her voice.

Blake shrugged, apparently self-consciously. “I can always hear them coming. Ruby isn’t very stealthy, and Yang isn’t exactly light on her feet.”

Weiss’ lips twitched in spite of herself. Rather than continue that line of conversation, she took several deep breaths to calm herself, and said, “We should catch up with them. That…inconsistency you noticed…”

Before she could get any further, Ruby’s red locks appeared around the corner of the building in front of them. “There you guys are!” she cried, dashing toward them, fortunately forgoing her Semblance.

Weiss braced herself for the hug that was surely coming, muscles tense and eyes half-shut, but the impact never came. Instead, Blake stepped calmly past her and intercepted their enthusiastic leader, turning on the spot to dispel the younger girl’s momentum. As she spun, her eyes met Weiss’.

She had done it on purpose. Weiss felt her lips trembling as she mouthed, _Thank you_. Blake just nodded, and began leading Ruby by the hand back toward Beacon as Yang rounded the same corner her sister had appeared from.

**Author's Note:**

>  **A/N** : For the first part…honestly, I’m kind of upset that we never got this scene in canon. Or even the slightest hint that it might have happened offscreen. They’re standoffish, but neither of them is _that_ unreasonable.
> 
> It probably feels like there’s no payoff to the second part, but there isn’t really meant to be. The inconsistency is something that I noticed, but which didn’t have attention drawn to it in canon. Personally, I expect canon to follow up on it eventually, so I don’t want to start drawing wild conclusions that are just going to get Jossed (TVTropes definition: “When a fan theory is disproved by later canon”).
> 
> As for the rest of it…it’s more of my headcanon, I guess.  
> Growing up outside the kingdoms, in the wilderness where Grimm stalk day and night, in a world that hates what she is, I read Blake as being quite fairly and legitimately paranoid. She’s able to function well in spite of it, but there’s always that sensation, like a prickling on the backs of one’s eyeballs, that _someone could be watching_ , that _she could be missing something_. She’s constantly very aware of her surroundings and a light sleeper, and sneaking up on her can elicit a panic reaction before she realizes that she’s not in danger.  
>  Weiss, meanwhile, grew up in an environment not fraught with danger but cold and distant and full of the sort of obligations that a child just doesn’t understand. In her own words, it was “very difficult” to grow up with, and that’s not just to do with the family being targeted by extremists. Think of her face when she has to call home from the CCT. This is not a girl who has a good relationship with her family. Consequently, I read Weiss as being quite touch-defensive. She doesn’t react well to being suddenly hugged or grabbed, and while she is able to deal with it if she knows and accepts that contact is incoming, she’s still not comfortable with it.
> 
> But that’s just my thoughts.


End file.
